Hill Training?

So John tells me that I need to start doing hills and that is the only way I'm going to survive the marathon without 1) being in pain 2)hating much of the race. So this is what I do today... sprinting hills in the cold rain. It brought me back to running track for St. Joseph's School in Aston PA. I was probably 10 years old, doing sprints on the hills at Neuman College. That experience is probably why it has taken me 20-plus years to start running again.

Hills suck.


March 10, 2010
Ran 8 miles today up the tow path of the D&R canal. Saw my first red-wing blackbird of the year. Saw a new beaver lodge, newly fallen trees (thanks beavers) and some trees where they tried to fell and then just said 'f-it.' I thought my watch was broken for awhile on the run because I couldn't believe that after what seemed about an hour I had only run 3 miles. Turns out the watch was right, i was running really slow.

March 9, 2010
Four hard miles today. Hard mainly because about 45 minutes prior I shoved a banana and about a 1/2 cup of peanut butter down my gob. Tasted good going down, but definitely had a different effect on the run.

March 8th
On bike in gym. Read a great article about how people exert less effort when paid to do things they would have done for free like helping someone move.

March 7, 2010
16.5 miles

Add another 2200 hundred baguettes to my former person record for longest runs. This was a great run in Burlington Vermont. Ran along the bike path along Lake Champlain. Then through the woods and Intervale (a floodplain of farms and woodland once owed by Ethan Allen). Ran up from the Winooski River to the top of Burlington, which seemed like a 5 mile hill, but only turned out to be 1.5 miles long. Ran straight down College street, middle of the road 7am on a Sunday morning, staring at the snow covered Adirondacks, and Lake Champlain. How could you not love Burlington? As I was trotting up Church Street, music piped from the speakers... it seemed like the whole town was cheering me on... until some jackass real runner with tights and water bottles, and fancy shoes and headphones and sub-atomic socks and extreme nacho wind-resistant wristbands, and probably thigh-lube with microbeads... sprinted by me and just happened to be going the same way I was for about the next 3 miles, until he was out of sight. bastard.

Despite him... great day, great run. Ended with bouncy castle time with Sayre and Josie!